Ganache Queries

Our answer

Ganache is a mixture of cream and chocolate and is often used as a cake frosting, such as for Nigella's Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake (from Feast and on the Nigella website). Nigella's recipe uses sour cream and butter which gives it a softer set. For a firmer ganache you want to use a cream with a higher fat cotent and a whipping cream (with a fat content of 30% or more) would be a good substitute for double cream.

A ganache sets partially due to the ratios of cocoa butter to cream as cocoa butter is firm a cool room temperature. Cocoa solids in dark or bittersweet chocoate also help the set and it is best to use a dark chocolate with a high cocoa solids content and a white chocolate with a high ratio of cocoa butter. Milk chocolate is made with added sugar and added vegetable fats and these vary from brand to brand. Usually a dark chocolate ganache is, by weight, 2:1 chocolate to cream and a white chocolate ganache is 3:1 chocolate to cream. Milk chocolate can be somewhere in between, depending on the brand. Unfortunately it can be a case of just trying the ratios until you get the consistency you want with the brand of chocolate you use, but start with a ratio of 3:1 chocolate to cream and work down from there. Using a good quality chocolate with as much cocoa solids and cocoa butter will help.